<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
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 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Social networking',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/09/26.jpg" alt="CROSSWALK CLOSED SORTA" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="to-do">
	<h2>To-do list</h2>
	<ul>
		<li>
			Inform people that I&apos;ve moved
			<ul>
				<li>
					Relevant online accounts
				</li>
			</ul>
		</li>
		<li>
			<del>Clean up my apartment</del>
			<ul>
				<li>
					<del>Clean up the kitchen</del>
				</li>
			</ul>
		</li>
	</ul>
</section>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I cleaned up my kitchen this morning, though it&apos;s sort of a moot point by now.
		I wanted my place cleaned up so I could have guests, but now that I&apos;ve given up my living room, there&apos;s nowhere for them to sit!
		I won&apos;t be able to have guests over until my mother has moved her stuff back out, and that won&apos;t be for quite some time.
	</p>
	<p>
		I tried to bring my apartment key to my mother today, but she doesn&apos;t answer her doorbell almost ever, and her screwy carrier drops most messages I try to send her.
		She still prefers $a[SMS] over email for some reason though, so that&apos;s how I try to reach her.
		I&apos;ll try again later when I have time to spare.
	</p>
	<p>
		Speaking of telephone messaging, since signing up for service with my current carrier, I&apos;ve been unable to receive $a[MMS] messages properly.
		I didn&apos;t want to ask the representative in my local mobile shop for reasons, so I&apos;ve been putting off asking about the issue until I was in the area to ask a representative at a more-distant store location.
		I asked today, and it seems the carrier no longer provides $a[MMS] messaging over 3G.
		If you don&apos;t have an $a[LTE]-capable device, you simply lose all $a[MMS] messages sent to you.
		You still get notification that they were supposed to arrive, and still getting the little &quot;download&quot; button; that button just fails every time it&apos;s hit.
		One more reason not to like that carrier, I guess.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve omitted something from my story a while back, and to understand my situation, I need to go back and tell you about it.
		It&apos;s not a big deal, but due to (I think) a misunderstanding, I&apos;ve been leaving the Grimm&apos;s Fairy Tales book lent to me by my coworker at work.
		I think the premise was that they were going to read it on their breaks as I do on mine, but I never see them read it.
		In any case, I don&apos;t have that book at home, so I&apos;ve been keeping a library book at home still to read when I need a break, as I&apos;m going to bed, and when I get up in the morning.
		I&apos;d finished another book, so I was headed to the library to return it.
		A neighbour caught me and asked me to return some things for them as well.
		It was several $a[DVD]s.
		Come to think of it, I don&apos;t remember where this paragraph was supposed to lead.
		I&apos;m a bit tired tonight.
	</p>
	<p>
		I felt weird going in to ask, but I said I&apos;d do it, so I did.
		I stopped by the police department to see if the officers there had any suggestions as to what I should do about my bike.
		The receptionist didn&apos;t have any official advice, but they did have a personal recommendation: use a car jack to bust the lock open.
		Huh.
		That&apos;s a really good idea, come to think of it.
		And they said it&apos;s what worked for them when they were in a similar situation.
	</p>
	<p>
		On the way back home, I saw a cute girl and felt mild attraction toward her.
		Some part of me isn&apos;t as gay as the rest.
		I swear, the worst part about my gayness is that it&apos;s not pure.
		If I were purely gay, I wouldn&apos;t have these conflicting, hetero thoughts.
		They confuse me into thinking I can be bisexual when I can&apos;t.
		I&apos;ve retained my aversion to vaginas though, so nothing has really changed.
		I&apos;m still what I was before, very, very gay.
	</p>
	<p>
		My neighbours constantly ask how things are going, so I mentioned the car jack suggestion.
		They said one of our other neighbours had a car jack they&apos;d probably lend me, so we asked.
		Instead of handing me the jack, they wanted to drive it (and me) over there.
		I wans&apos;t happy about that, but I didn&apos;t see a way to turn them down without sounding rude.
		Meanwhile, they smoked in the car the whole way, giving me a headache.
		Once we got there, they pulled out the largest car jack I&apos;d ever seen.
		I wasn&apos;t sure how we&apos;d fit that in the lock, and as it turned out, we couldn&apos;t.
		Had they simply handed me the car jack instead of driving over there, we could&apos;ve spared the trip, as I&apos;d&apos;ve known it was probably too large to function for my purposes.
	</p>
	<p>
		That neighbour mumbles a lot, so I can&apos;t tell what they&apos;re saying much of the time.
		As such, we ended up pointlessly going to a hardware store next, because they thought it was a good idea and I didn&apos;t know where we were going.
		More smoking worsened my headache, as did dehydration.
		It was a hot day, and I hadn&apos;t prepared for a multi-stop trip.
		I&apos;d planned to go get the bike and be done, so I brought no water.
		Going to the hardware store didn&apos;t do any good, either.
		My neighbour wanted me to buy tools to break the lock with, but I can&apos;t afford brand new tools.
		Had I known where we were going, I could&apos;ve told them that before we even started in that direction.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once we got back, they lent me a hack saw, which they think can (with much time spent) cut through the lock.
		They also recommended trying to freeze the lock with butane if the saw didn&apos;t work out, then hitting the frozen lock with a hammer as hard as I can.
		I&apos;m not sure of the environmental impact of releasing butane into the air though, so I&apos;d need to look up more about that before I could consider trying it.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I worked on my discussion assignments some more:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			&quot;Social media&quot; is a vague term (Nations, 2017), without substantial meaning.
			Some people use the term to refer to any website you can interact with people on or post messages to.
			As Daniel Nations says, that includes most sites on the Web today.
			Others, such as myself, use the term to refer exclusively to social networking.
			Social networks are a type of interactive website in which people chat and post about what they want to, and it&apos;s organised a bit based on when things have been posted.
			Usually, you&apos;ll only see messages from people you follow or befriended, depending on the system.
			Both in organisation and in what is seen by a given user, this make social networks a bit different than Web forums.
		</p>
		<p>
			Social media has a place, but it&apos;s taking over certain aspects of the Web to the point that certain Web services become unusable.
			For example, some sites and Web applications no longer have their own login system any more.
			Instead, they require users to sign in using Facebook.
			However, Facebook&apos;s noxious terms of service aren&apos;t something everyone can agree to, nor is their system very friendly.
			A long time ago, I signed up for Facebook so I could use their messaging system to contact a friend that used Facebook at the time.
			However, their system was set up such that you couldn&apos;t use Facebook messaging unless you first linked a telephone number to the account, even though the messaging system was entirely on the Web and didn&apos;t involve telephones at all.
			It was Facebook&apos;s way of trying to strong-arm people into providing more information to Facebook: their personal telephone numbers.
			This was unacceptable, but more to the point, I don&apos;t even have telephone service, so as the account was of no use to me, I deleted it.
			Some time later, I tried setting up an account again; I forget why.
			This time, Facebook wouldn&apos;t even allow me to create an account without linking and verifying a telephone number.
			Again, I don&apos;t have telephone service, and even if I did, my telephone number would be none of Facebook&apos;s business.
			Like before, I gave up.
			Later still, I tried registering again to show someone the noxious telephone number requirement (because they didn&apos;t believe me) and we found a new, nasty surprise: this time, Facebook was demanding <strong>*photo $a[ID]*</strong> from me.
			When your social network is demanding photo $a[ID], you <strong>*know*</strong> there&apos;s something seriously wrong with the system.
			Facebook has progressively gotten less and less friendly to new users over time.
			People don&apos;t always use the name on their $a[ID], nor should they have to.
			I, for example, was given a name at birth that I&apos;ve always hated.
			I&apos;ve never once identified by that name online in any capacity, and it&apos;s not the name my offline friends knew me by either.
			Had I used my birth name on my Facebook account, no one I knew would even be able to find me.
			I was named based on what&apos;s between my legs, but my brain is a hodgepodge of masculinity and femininity; only an androgynous name can feel like it actually describes me correctly.
			A real name is what you call yourself; a legal name is what the government calls you.
			Thankfully, I&apos;ve gone to court to have my name legally changed, so my legal name now matches my real name, but there&apos;s still no valid reason for Facebook to demand either my photo $a[ID] or my non-existent telephone number.
			Not having a Facebook account though, I&apos;m unable to log into any site that outsources their login system to Facebook.
			I have a similar issue with sites that outsource their login system to Google+ as well, as Google too demands a telephone number.
			I&apos;m told Twitter demands a telephone number these days for new accounts as well, but my account there&apos;s old enough to have been created before that idiotic requirement was put in place.
			On principle though, I&apos;ve quit posting to Twitter for the most part, and only use it to communicate with certain companies that refuse to answer their email or don&apos;t provide an email address in their public contact information.
		</p>
		<p>
			This trend toward outsourcing login systems for Web applications to social media sites is disturbing.
			First of all, not all of us can get onto those social networks, due to noxious requirements of those networks.
			Perhaps more importantly though are the privacy and security aspects of this trend.
			When you log into several sites using Facebook, Facebook knows about all those accounts you have on those sites.
			Facebook&apos;s business model is known; you&apos;re not the customer, but the product, and Facebook sells your information to advertisers.
			Do you really want Facebook having <strong>*more*</strong> information about you to sell?
			The same business model is used by Google and likely Twitter, so it&apos;s not a great idea to use those accounts for login either.
			As for security, your social networking account becomes a single point of failure under this login model.
			If your Facebook account is compromised, so are all the accounts that you use your Facebook account to log into.
			If you&apos;re like me, you use a different password for every single account, so if one account is compromised, none of the others are (unless it&apos;s your email account that gets compromised, as the attacker could then perform password resets on the other accounts to gain entry).
			So in short, using your social media account to log into websites and Web applications is a risky move in terms of security and a known-detrimental move in terms of privacy.
		</p>
		<p>
			I&apos;m not super active on social media.
			For the most part, if people want to communicate with me synchronously, they do so over $a[IRC] or $a[XMPP] (mostly $a[IRC]).
			If they want to communicate with me asynchronously, they use email instead.
			However, I do have accounts on five social networks for anyone that desires to reach me that way.
			One is on Twitter, though I don&apos;t recommend Twitter.
			Another is on Ello, but Ello has the problem of being centralised like the major social networks.
			As far as I know though, Ello doesn&apos;t sell your data.
			And finally, I have my main three networks: <a href="https://gnu.io/social/">$a[GNU] Social</a>, <a href="https://diasporafoundation.org/">diaspora*</a>, and <a href="https://pump.io/">pump.io</a>.
		</p>
		<p>
			What I like about $a[GNU] Social, diaspora*, and pump.io is that these networks are decentralised and run using free software.
			Because they&apos;re decentralised, you can set up an account on any of several servers; one company doesn&apos;t hold everyone&apos;s data.
			If you want to host your own instance (as I plan to do with one of these networks once I have an Internet server set up again), you can do that as well; <strong>*you*</strong> can be in control of your own data!
			Additionally, as these networks all run free software, all the source code is available and can be audited at any time and by anyone.
			You can be relatively sure that nothing malicious is happening without your knowledge.
			In addition, I like $a[GNU] Social because it plays nicely with other websites hosted on the same server.
			It&apos;s code was written in such a way that $a[GNU] Social runs as content served by a standard $a[HTTP] server.
			This means you can host multiple sites on the same server (for example, your main site and your social networking site) with no problems.
		</p>
		<p>
			The main thing I don&apos;t like about diaspora* and pump.io is that they run as stand-alone server software.
			That means that they bind to your port <code>443</code> (or port <code>80</code>, if you&apos;re too foolish to use $a[TLS]), so you can&apos;t host your main website on the same server without resorting to hacky reverse proxy tricks.
			Additionally, diaspora* refuses to function with self-signed certificates, which is a downer.
			I don&apos;t have the money to spend on a commercial certificate.
			Besides, if self-signed certificates are rejected, it&apos;s inconsistent not to also reject unencrypted $a[HTTP].
			Unencrypted $a[HTTP] is <strong>*far*</strong> more vulnerable to spoofing, eavesdropping, and man-in-the-middle attacks.
			As for $a[GNU] Social, my only real complaint is that I don&apos;t like the developers.
			I&apos;ve yet to find fault with the actual software or the social network, so of the three, this is the one I plan to host an instance of.
			Another disappointing aspect of these three networks is their lack of popularity.
			If you choose to use these networks, be prepared not to recognise many people on them.
			Because the big-name social networks sell your data, they have a bigger advertising budget to use to try to draw people to them.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Nations, D. (2017, May 30). What Is Social Media? Explaining the Big Trend. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-media-explaining-the-big-trend-3486616"><code>https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-media-explaining-the-big-trend-3486616</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			You make a very good point, and I was thinking something similar myself.
			Writing programs to be aware of one another would introduce much complexity to even the most basic programs.
			Additionally, at least when using proprietary code, people would need to keep rewriting this same functionality so all programs would be aware of other software that needs to run too.
			In the free software world, one library could be developed to handle this, so no wheels would need to be reinvented repeatedly there, but there would still be a lot of overhead with a copy of that code in memory for each and every program that used it.
			If the library needed to be statically linked, it&apos;d take a lot of disk space with several copies of the library there as well.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			It&apos;s worth noting though that the timer isn&apos;t in the operating system, but in the hardware.
			Because the operating system has to give up control of the $a[CPU], the operating system isn&apos;t able to run anything, including any timers.
			Instead, the operating system depends on the hardware to run an outside-of-$a[OS] timer and switch control back to the operating system when it goes off.
			If the hardware doesn&apos;t have such a built-in timer, the operating system is unable to regain control until the software makes a system call, finishes executing, or tries to perform an illegal action.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I like your comparison table.
			It does a great job of explaining where each algorithm excels and where it has faults.
			No scheduling algorithm can achieve perfection, but depending on the main goal, a good algorithm can none the less be found and implemented.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		It&apos;s almost time to register for next term&apos;s courses.
		When I have time, I need to look through my needed courses list and see what needs to be completed next.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
